Families have yet to come to grips with fatal crash

OAKWOOD – Tim Stewart is not looking forward to Christmas.

He says all the happiness went out of his life July 26, when his pregnant daughter and son-in-law died in an accident that he witnessed.

"This is every parent's worst nightmare," said Stewart, 50, of Oakwood.

He and his wife Terri, 48, are now raising Chad and Kimberly Hagan's 3-year-old daughter, Alexis Brianne Hagan, known to her family as Lexi.

"I found out very rapidly that nothing in life matters (if) your family is gone. In a matter of a split second, our life was in turmoil. It's so very, very frustrating. I still wake up every morning and say, 'God, no.' Why can't it just be a bad dream?"

It's not just the grief that is crippling the Stewarts and Linda Boyer, the mother of Chad Hagan. They are angry and frustrated that the only punishment Marie Lazzell suffered through the courts was a $250 fine for improper lane usage.

They learned after the accident that Lazzell had consumed alcohol at an afternoon gathering with friends that day.

Though her blood-alcohol level of 0.04 percent was not enough to sustain a charge of driving under the influence, tests showed that she had three different medications in her system.

Lazzell's car crossed completely into the lane of the motorcycle that Chad Hagan was driving, according to an accident reconstruction. He had a blood-alcohol level of 0.09 percent, toxicology tests showed. Illinois law says a driver is presumed intoxicated at 0.08 percent.

Edgar County State's Attorney Matt Sullivan decided to prosecute Lazzell on just the petty traffic offense after consulting with lawyers from the Illinois Department of Transportation.

"If her version is, 'I dozed off,' what do we have to show beyond a reasonable doubt that isn't what happened? It's our burden to show that she didn't doze off, that she was under the influence. If you can't show beyond a reasonable doubt that's not what happened, the best you have is improper lane usage," Sullivan said.

"It's a tragic situation that there's not a great response to," said the prosecutor, who informed the Stewarts and Boyer in writing of his decision.

"This lady is not being held responsible. That's wrong," Stewart said. "We're adults. The law says we should be held accountable for our actions. She made a conscious decision to get behind the wheel of that car and drive the way she did. She knew what could happen, and she did it anyway."

"I think it's unfair, very unfair," said Boyer, 49, of Westville. She raised Chad in Bismarck with a live-in boyfriend who for 18 years was a big part of Chad's life.

"I'm sure she didn't do this intentionally. At first, when it happened, I looked at all the angles. Then I found out she'd been drinking and had drugs in her system. That changed my outlook.

"She had a choice to get behind that wheel. She took that choice and she did that. We're upset, but we're angered. We're just trying to deal with it mentally and physically."

A small blessing

On the day of the accident, a Saturday, the Stewart family was out in force for a poker run, an entertainment event in which motorcyclists drive to designated locations, drawing a card at each stop. At the end of the run, which usually benefits a charity, the best hand wins.

This run involved stops at taverns, Stewart said, and included their only other child, Timothy "T.J." Stewart, who was home on military leave for the weekend.

Tim and Terri Stewart were on one cycle; T.J. and his wife, Brandi Stewart, were on another; Kimberly and Chad were on a third.

The men were driving.

"We had been on the poker run since about 11 a.m. We had made four stops and were on our way to the fifth one," Tim Stewart said.

It was shortly after 3 p.m.

"We were traveling north on Route 1. Chad and Kimmy were about two minutes down the road. They had passed us up and said they'd see us at Ridge Farm or Catlin. Ridge Farm was to be the final stop," he said.

Stewart said his son drifted back a bit, but he could still see T.J.'s cycle.

"We looked up and saw a car had erratically changed lanes. It looked like the front of the car exploded. The car went into a spin and into the ditch," Stewart said.

He and T.J. stopped behind the car. They assumed that Kim and Chad were so far ahead as to be unaware of the accident.

Finding Lazzell conscious in her car, Stewart called 911 to report a single-car accident.

"She wanted to get out of the car and she started climbing over the console. I went to the passenger side to get her out. I noticed a hole in the windshield," he said.

Stewart said Lazzell told him she was "so, so tired" and must have dozed off.

Seeing that the windshield was concave and Lazzell had no visible head injuries, Stewart said it was apparent something had hit it from the outside.

"We got about halfway down to the impact site, and my son took off running. He shouted out: 'My God, Dad, it's Kimberly,'" Stewart recounted.

Chad Hagan was in a ditch next to his wrecked motorcycle, obviously lifeless. They couldn't see Kimberly.

"I remembered seeing something fly off the car. I told my son to head for the cornfield. We found her about six or eight rows inside the cornfield, about 50 to 75 feet off the road. She was face down, but she had a good pulse. She was breathing well. I asked her not to talk but had her squeeze my hand in response to my questions," which she did, he said.

He called 911 again. Kimberly was taken by ambulance to Provena United Samaritans Medical Center in Danville and almost immediately airlifted to Carle Foundation Hospital in Urbana, where she died at 8:38 p.m. of internal bleeding after surgery.

"If you can call anything a blessing, it's that we were able to be with her. The unfortunate thing is she died before we could tell her goodbye," Stewart said.

Chad Hagan was pronounced dead at the scene, a victim of blunt force chest trauma. Toxicology tests showed he had a blood-alcohol level of 0.09 percent. But Stewart maintained his son-in-law had no problem driving.

"There's a difference between legally intoxicated and impaired. In my opinion, he was not impaired. He did everything possible to move out of danger," Stewart said.

A state police accident reconstructionist reported that skid marks showed the southbound Lazzell car had crossed all the way over into the Hagans' lane when it hit their motorcycle.

Aftermath

Testifying at a Nov. 17 inquest in Urbana into Kimberly Hagan's death, Illinois State trooper Keith Lumsargis said he didn't know when Lazzell's blood was drawn at the hospital in Danville. But some time between her admission around 3:30 p.m. and when he arrived at 6:26 p.m., it was 0.046 percent. At 7:05 p.m., he administered a portable breath test to her that registered 0.

Edgar County Coroner Pete Templeton, who conducted Chad Hagan's inquest Nov. 18 in Paris, said an emergency room nurse at Provena USMC reported Lazzell said she had consumed two margarita punch drinks around 2 p.m. on the day of the crash.

She also told the nurse she had taken a Vicodin that morning. But Templeton said that was not consistent with what was found in her system. What was found, he said, were trace elements of amitriptyline, an antidepressant; diphenhydramine, the active ingredient in Benadryl; and propoxyphene, a pain reliever that can cause drowsiness, especially when combined with alcohol.

"However, there was no way of knowing at what point she had taken those," Templeton said.

Lazzell's remorse

Rick Lazzell said his mother, he and his brothers did not want to be interviewed for this story but issued the following statement via e-mail to The News-Gazette:

"Our whole family is heartsick over this very, very tragic event, we do not take this lightly and we all have very much sympathy for the families involved, but we are not able to relay this to them personally. Everyone that knows my mother realizes she is the type that would never intentionally even hurt a fly, so she has been completely crushed by this and will probably never be the same for the remaining few years she has left."

Lazzell's attorney, Richard Kash of Paris, said his client has "no recollection of the accident. She knows now what the result was. She does not remember how it happened. She's had a lot of sleepless nights," he said.

Kash said he didn't investigate what, if any, medications she was on or alcohol she might have consumed once Sullivan informed him the charge would be only improper lane usage.

Lazzell chose to have a stipulated bench trial Nov. 13. The proceeding is similar to a guilty plea in that the defendant and the prosecutor agree what the evidence is but let the judge decide guilt. That spares her from having an admission of liability on the record should there be a civil suit down the road.

Seeking closure

The coroner's juries in both Champaign and Edgar counties found the Hagans' deaths to be homicidal. That Sullivan resolved Lazzell's case before the inquests rankles Stewart, who testified at both.

He urged the jurors not to be sympathetic because of Lazzell's advanced age, a fact that the Stewarts and Boyer believe influenced Sullivan not to charge her criminally.

Both are convinced if the tables were turned and their young sons had been responsible for Lazzell's death, there would be criminal charges.

"I don't expect them to put a 76-year-old woman in jail. The only thing I want is for her to stand before us and my granddaughter and tell her she's sorry. I want her license gone. I want her privileges gone before she does this to somebody else," Stewart said.

Said Boyer: "Me and the Stewart family just want closure. It's not fair she's getting charged with illegal lane usage and she's killed three people."

Templeton reminded jurors – as coroners routinely do at inquests – that inquests are neither civil nor criminal proceedings but merely a way to determine the manner of a person's death. They have no bearing on how prosecutors decide to charge cases.

Memories – and Lexi – left

Tim and Terri Stewart were enjoying being grandparents. Besides Lexi, they have two other grandchildren.

"I wanted to be a grandpa, and I am a grandpa. I don't have a bit of a problem raising Lexi, yet I didn't plan on being a dad at 50," he said.

The Stewarts and Boyer said they struggle constantly to keep their grief in check, hoping to keep Lexi's life as normal as possible. Both sets of parents had almost daily contact with their children and Lexi, so their lives are dramatically different now.

Chad Hagan was a truck driver; his wife was a teller at the Landmark Credit Union in Westville. They'd been together about four years.

"They were very active kids. They were fun-loving. You name it, if it was outdoors, they did it. They liked to fish, boat, camp," Stewart said. And they were excited about the prospect of another child.

Boyer said she's thinking even more about her son now because he loved to hunt.

"Chad was a very good kid. He cared for his family very much. He had a lot of friends, very outgoing, would do anything for anybody, had a big heart," his mom said.

And Kimberly was "infatuated" with their daughter, said the father who was also infatuated with his.

"She was the best mother I have ever seen in my life. They were inseparable and Chad was a very good dad to Lexi," he said.

At age 3, Lexi asks about her parents frequently. Boyer said she tries not to cry in front of her.

"I'll tell her I stubbed my toe. I very much keep Chad and her mommy in her life," she said.

The same holds true for the Stewarts.

"She has asked many times where her mommy and daddy are at. We tell her mommy and daddy are in heaven and watching over her every minute of every day," Stewart said. "She told us a couple of times to go get her mommy and daddy."

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